A deafening boom, so strong that it caused waves in an otherwise calm sea, almost made both Admiral Dundas and Lord Raglan fall from their chairs, in the cabin of HMS Britannia where they were having breakfast.
"By Jove, what is going on?" protested the Admiral, glaring at his uniform stained orange from the tea he was drinking.
He and the general immediately ran up on the deck, and what they saw was a scene worthy of a surreal nightmare.
The large man-of-war in the middle of the barrier had been literally ripped apart by an impressing series of detonations.
But the most incredible thing was that, out of nowhere, as if because of a magical spell, from the water all around a dense white curtain had begun to rise, so dense that in a matter of seconds it became impossible to see through it.
And yet, that was just the beginning.
Because if from the sea the view was limited, from the hill to the south the commander of the British batteries, General John Burgoyne, could get a clear idea of what was really going on.
With a coordination that almost defied belief, from the piers, from the ships, even from the roofs of the houses that stood near the water, large casks filled with more two hundred and fifty tons of dry ice, scavenged from each cold room of the city, had been thrown overboard.
The same dry ice kept in the hold of the Khrabryi, properly sealed to avoid infiltrations, but that had been all let out at the moment of the detonation.
The result was that, in a short while, Sevastopol as a whole was cloaked by a ghastly fog, thick and compact, that, favored by the humidity carried by the wind, took the shape of an enormous cloud.
"God Almighty." murmured Dundas.
Before that kind of spectacle, Raglan himself shivered, because he knew that on the face of the Earth only one person was able to think of something so out of the box.
"It's her!" he yelled. "It's her doing!"
If the cloud completely denied sight from the sea, from the hills instead it was still possible to overlook with some clarity what was happening within the city; and it was because of that that Burgoyne and his men were able to immediately realize that such a God-forsaken tactic had the lone objective to hide the Russian fleet sortieing from the harbour.
They were likely not expecting that the fog, thick as it was, wouldn't be enough to preserve visibility on the bay from the artillery posts there. If nothing else, there was someone able to stop them.
"Quick!" the General thundered. "Load them guns! Prepare to fire!"
Luckily in the night the loads of powder and ammo from Evpatoria had come, therefore the British could have rained fire and destruction on the Russians without a single bother; it was like a shooting gallery.
All the gunners immediately got to work, and in a record-breaking time all the guns were loaded and aimed.
"Ready, sir!"
"Fire! Fire at will!"
The fuzes were lit... and at the same time they went out.
Not a single shot was fired.
For a moment, silence weighing like a boulder fell upon everyone up there.
"What in the devil is going on?" asked the General.
"The powder's not taking, sir!"
"What do you mean, it's not taking?"
Numerous attempts were made, while the Russian ships were getting away without punishment, but the most that could be gotten out of the cannons was some coughing snap, not even enough to let the shell out of the muzzle.
As a last, desperate resort they tried to break into new casks, fearing that the powder of some of them had been compromised by the last storm, but it had no effect.
Burgoyne was so beside himself that he himself ripped the match cord out of the gunner's hands to fire the piece himself, and it was only when he saw with his own eyes that nothing was happening that he fully realized the situation, to which he could find no logical explanation.
At last, a thought.
With wide eyes, he ran over to the canopy under which the casks were piled up, literally smashing one open with a mighty kick and scattering its contents all around; at first glance, everything was in order, but the General had only to grab a handful and bring it closer to his face to notice, among all the other smells, another one, pretty unmistakable.
"Tea...?"
Shocked, he opened many others, and each time, with care, that smell that in other circumstances would have been found extremely pleasant showed up, revealing the great deception.
By then, he was wild with rage.
"Son of a bitch!" he roared, throwing one of the casks down the walls.
While befuddlement reigned supreme upon them, and not understanding why no gunfire was coming from the hill to signal a changed situation within the harbour, the Allied ships that made up the blockading fleet found themselves in the peculiar situation of not knowing what to do.
Several of them had still the sails furled, or the engines shut down and cold, or both, or even with the anchors dropped, thus unable to decide whether to keep the formation or try in some way to get close to the fog bank to begin the daily bombardment of the forst.
On the Britannia's quarterdeck, Admiral Dundas and Lord Raglan were equally mystified, and if Raglan from his part exhorted to be ready, the Admiral himself could not understand what could be cooking up with that maneuver.
Then, all of a sudden, some shapes were spotted within the fog, at the extreme left of the mouth of the canal, right under the Quarantine Bastion. A moment of worry followed, but it became shock when the shapes turned into a dozen or so of small vessels, mostly steamers, small ones and with no armament visible.
One after another they came out of the bank, in a single line, immediately turning to port right after clearing the roadstead and showing their sides to the Allied fleet, compared to which they looked like many ants eager to challenge a pride of lions.
"What in blazes are they playing at?" growled the Admiral. "Do they hope to hit us at that range?"
But actually, the newcomers showed no sign of wishing to open fire.
Instead, without even slowing down, they showed off with a graceful maneuver that made them draw an almost perfect semicircle, after which they made for the canal once more, without breaking their rigid formation not even once.
That strange maneuver left speechless even Admiral Hamelin, who, aboard the ship of the line Ville de Paris, 118 guns, six ships forwards of the Britannia, was in command of the French squadron.
However, he was the first to notice, in a few minutes' time, the appearance of strange ripples in the calm waters of the bay, followed by strange lights and flares.
"What in the world are those, now?" he said when, grabbing a spyglass, he could glimpse a bunch of long wooden logs that, pushed by a bunch of fireworks tied on their back section, were making their way towards them at a decent speed.
As those things, three or four at most, were mainly aimed at the right flank of the formation, Dundas and Raglan took just a bit more to notice them, but again, the more favourable angle of observation allowed them to better glimpse their shape.
They were, basically, a wooden log, roughly six feet long and one foot wide; going more or less at fifteen knots, straight as a die, thanks to the propulsive force of six fireworks tied together by leather bounds, and connected with the central body thanks to a rod a foot long that kept it above water; some kind of bird-like wings prevented them from sinking, and to that likely contributed a kind of fin positioned on the fore, that could be glimpsed from time to time when the object jumped over a wave. On the fore there was also an arrow-shaped bow, that together with the oblique shape of the 'wings' allowed them to pierce through the water easily.
When Hamelin understood himself, that thing was a few dozen yards' away.
"Mon Dieu..."
The Ville de Paris was clearly tagged by one of those logs, more or less at the height of the quarterdeck, and less than a second afterwards a loud explosion echoed.
Hamelin felt the whole ship shake under his feet and list a bit, as if an enormous whale had crashed into it, and just then the alarm bell rang from below deck.
"Hole in the hull!" the carpenter bellowed. "We're taking on water! The hold is flooding!"
It wasn't that serious, actually, not with the state-of-the-art pumps the ship was fitted with.
However, the psychological effect was devastating, especially since other fared much worse; because if the Ville de Paris came out with just a scratch, two of the three logs managed to pass through the line of capital ships and reach the supply schooner Argenteuil.
One of the two hit the small ship on the bow, detonating without doing much, but the other struck amidships; the explosion punched through to the powder room, and with that the vessel literally blew up, snapping in two and sinking in a matter of minutes.
"Holy Christ!" shrieked Dundas, and in the eyes of each seaman that had assisted to that sheer terror appeared when they realized that the sea was full of those infernal things, that, launched one after the other from the Russian boats, were coming straight for them, like sharks attracted by prey. "Evasive maneuvers, Goddammit! Evasive maneuvers!"
All forty and some ships of the fleet set sail and fired up their engines at the same time, and, every semblance of coordinated maneuver gone to hell, worried only about getting out of those things' trajectory.
"What are you waiting for!" Raglan yelled. "Fire! Open fire! Take out those hellish things!"
The gunners obeyed, soon obeyed by those of the nearby ships, but the results were pretty much disappointing; simply put, there was no way to properly aim for something so small and quick, and in the end the shots that hit were just a minority. But the worst thing was that, since everybody was thinking for himself, the ships in the blockade pretty much sailed all over themselves, going so far as as accidentally ramming into each other while trying to get to safety.
The maneuver left even the defenders of the Russian forts speechless, since nobody would have ever expected to see the famed Royal Navy so discombobulated. Who wasn't that surprised were the seamen and the gunners aboard the Russian steamers, who, despite having never seen them before, had imagined what could be the potential of those torpedoes.
One of the was named Ivan, able seaman aboard the Odessa; with his companions, he had worked all night long to build the gunwales on the ship's sides on which he was standing now, fitted with ports through which the torpedoes could be brought.
As he prepared to deploy another, getting it into the water and holding tightly onto it with both hands, for a moment he remembered the speech done by the General the night before, in the last briefing.
Placed upon a table in one of the harbour's huts, in the candlelight, the torpedo looked much bigger than it actually war.
Katyusha had called the best gunners of the various ships chosen for the mission, and it was an euphemism to call them shocked and confused because of what was before them.
In the days before they had been informed about them and, if that could be said, trained in their use, but the thought of having to handle those things in an engagement without even testing them rightly deprived them of calm.
And yet, the General looked like the poster child of assurance, showing nothing but complete faith in that object created by her mind.
"I'll run the risk of sounding repetitive, so I'll tell you once more." she said, pacing around the table. "Be very careful when you handle them. To keep down the weight, the thickness of the wood is less than a third of an inch, both for the casing and for the wings. The fore part of the tube has been filled with powder and fitted with a pressure device, that will cause the detonation less than two seconds after impact. We have added some chemicals to the powder, which in theory will increase its power, but at the same time it makes it less stable. So, be very careful when the time comes."
"General." said then Sebrikov, the commander of the Odessa. "Forgive me, if I dare to ask you this, but... are you really sure it will work?"
"Nothing is ever certain in war, there are only occasions to grab whenever possible. Even if the fog caused by the dry ice will cover us while we get out, the Allies would cut us to pieces as soon as we get out of the harbour, as long as they remain in formation. We have to break it. Only then we'll have gained the time we need."
Katyusha had to climb upon a chair to properly illustrate the inner mechanisms of the weapon, but nobody would ever have thought to comment about or laugh at it.
"The fireworks that work as a propeller won't last long. Best case scenario, they'll reach the six hundred yard mark before they'll stop. And even though we've emptied them of the explosives, there is a chance they might go off. Therefore, first get them into the water, then pull this small cord. That will activate an internal fuze that will set off the compound, so you won't have to light it by hand.
Remember, you'll have just a few seconds. When they'll understand what is happening, the Allies will surely open fire, and despite the range there is the chance that some of their hits might reach you. And I don't have to tell you what would happen, should you get hit with all this stuff onboard, do I?"
The idea gave everyone chills and cold sweat; it was already plenty dangerous to sail with a lighted boiler and a few hundredweights' worth of coal, but that was even worse.
"The ships will have to maneuver in such a way to leave them as little exposed to the enemy fire as possible. Don't waste time and try to aim , because the wind and the currents will factor in as well. Drop as many torpedoes as you can and then get back here as quickly as possible. If everything goes according to plan, this will leave the enemy thoroughly confused.
Is everything clear?"
"Yes, sir." everyone duly answered.
And what Katyusha had predicted, was coming about.
Somebody at first had secretly doubted of the effectiveness of a weapon that was going at a tenth of the speed of a cannonball.
But in that slowness lied its strength, even not counting, as it had been seen, the ability to sink a small ship; because the enemy had plenty of time to sight it, and, with little that could be done to stop it, his only thought was to avoid it at any cost, resulting in what could be seen-
The Allied fleet in a few minutes lost all cohesion, other than losing two other minor ships, while four more suffered low-to-medium damage in their hulls, ending up with five feet of water in the hold, on the luckiest one.
The HMS Trafalgar, sister ship of the Britannia, ended up in huge trouble right as her crew had believed they had evaded it, when one of the torpedoes went and crashed against the rudder, taking it out.
"The rudder's shot, Sir!" the helmsman told the ship's captain, and Vice-Admiral Lyons, whose flag flew on her.
"We'll steer her by sails! Open up!"
Theoretically it was possible to steer a ship like that, as long as there were enough wind.
With lots of effort, the Trafalgar tried to get out of the hotspot, but the situation took a turn for the dramatic when, with terror dancing in his eyes, Lyons saw HMS Agamemnon that, burning like a torch and drifting, was coming at them.
"Full sails, in God's name! We have to get out!"
"Too late, Sir!" said his flag-captain, who, thanks to being twenty years his junior, managed to jump overboard, together with the few others that showed the same quick reflexes.
The Agamemnon rammed the Trafalgar amidships, and almost immediately the two men-of-war were obliterated by a huge explosion that was accompanied by a shockwave.
The Allied fleet was completely dispersed, prey to total chaos, and in that moment, almost ignored by their very enemies, the return of the steamers in the fog coincided with the appearance of the Russian ships, that were able to sortie undisturbed.
Flying Admiral Nachimov's flag, but with Katyusha at his side in command, the Konstantin was in the middle.
The Prince himself had been left ashore, leading the ground defenses to prevent an eventual, desperate enemy assault against the city.
The Russian fleet was able to form up without being molested, turning north for a bit; that had been possible also thanks to the charges placed by the divers on the sunken hulks, whose demolition had allowed their sisters to slip out.
As the line of battle sailed on towards the enemy, Katyusha waited, and waited some more, keeping an admirable restraint even when rhe enemies, recognizing the danger and having recovered a little, had opened fire. Till the last possible moment.
"Fire!"
The first concentrated broadside was nothing less than devastating. Several Allied ships were out of formation and not showing their side to the opponents, their stern galleries vulnerable and their sails spread out.
Both the Britannia and the Ville de Paris were among the lucky ships, as other, much less lucky ones unwillingly shielded them, but both Dundas and Hamelin had to look as two of their ships were taken out of the fight, with several others suffering severe damage; one of them, the French Hasardeux, didn't think twice about it and struck, giving up.
"Signal everyone, form up now! Now!"
Even though the Allies were desperately trying to regain cohesion and some semblance of order, two more broadside were fired, augmented by gunfire coming from the two forts at the mouth of the Canal and the Quarantine Fort; and, unfortunately, the latter was not just normal gunfire.
With the exception of the Quarantine Fort, by then cut off from the other defenses by the French trenchworks, the other two forts had received a huge quantity of enormous shells made in a record-breaking time, a bit slapdash, perhaps, but still effective.
They were more or less similar to those prepared on Katyusha's orders at Balaklava, with the lone difference that, other than with vodka and other flammable liquids, these ones were fitted with a primer that made the grenade detonate a few seconds after being fired.
The result was that on the Allied fleet literally rained fire, with sails going up in flames and powder rooms threatening to go up and blow up the ships, making even more difficult to keep an eye on the enemy vessels and on what was happening on the shore.
But this was, in the end, still the Royal Navy.
Dundas had to cry himself raw, and the signalmen spend quite a bit of effort hauling and lowering flags, but in the end, perhaps even against the hopes of Katyusha herself, her enemies were once more in a line-of-battle, formed up against the Russian one.
"Don't waste ammo!" ordered Katyusha. "Tack in unison, reverse course!"
It was by far a tall order, and beside her Nachimov blanched; but after a second, he confirmed it with a firm voice.
It was clear that the enemy, once more safe in formation, aimed to turn this into the most classic of fleet engagements, hauling up for a close engagement where both their superior discipline, better gunners and numerical superiority (despite the losses suffered so far, the Allied capital ships still outnumbered the Russian ones five to one) could be brought to bear.
Katyusha's order partly prevented that, as long as it could be executed; but the complex maneuver, with the intercession of lots of Orthodox saints whose name were pronounced in vain, was completed in the end, despite more than a few ships bumping into each other or switching position. Now the Russian line of battle was sailing in the opposite direction, denying the opponents the chance to focus on a single opponent.
But, unfortunately for her, Dundas was no fool.
"Now!" he ordered, just as the van was coming up to the Russian's rear.
With staggering precision, despite the damage, the Allied line turned about in unison with staggering precision, as if it were done in a fleet review, with nary a trouble, thus bringing about the very situation that the Russians feared.
"Dammit!"
Also, as they had tacked into the wind, the speed of the two lines was rather low, giving the Allied gunners plenty of time to aim.
"Fire!"
As the first Russian broadside had been, the Allied one was crushing as well, with several Imperial ships, serving as target for more than one opponent, being literally riddled with shells; the one coming off the worst was the Varna, third in line, absorbing so many hits that, after losing the mizzenmast, got her very bow smashed, veering off the line abruptly and barely missed by the following ship.
A wooden splinter four inches long just missed Katyusha, and ended up lodged in Admiral Nachimov's arm.
"Admiral!" said Katyusha as he slumped on the deck.
"It's nothing! It's nothing!"
Dundas, at the sight of the Russian fleet being slowly cut to pieces, felt the taste of an incoming victory, a bit prematurely perhaps; because Katyusha had not ran out of aces in her sleeve.
"The torpedoes! Deploy them now or we're all dead!"
Lots of commanders had been less than happy to carry in their holds those bombs waiting to get off, but they ended up being providential at last; because this time, at a substantially greater range, seeing them deployed send shivers on the back of each and every Allied captain.
"Evasive maneuvers, break off the engagement." the Admirals quickly ordered.
There were a few bumps along the way and a few hits, with the escort ship HMS Leicester taking one amidships and sporting a six feet gash in the hull, but, perhaps due to the hurried deployment, very few hits were recorded. However, this expedient and the evasive maneuver of the enemy allowed the Russians to break off the engagement and gain a respite.
As the two lines of battle reformed, squaring off near the southern and northern shoals, some counts could be made; in the end, the Allied losses and damages were higher, but the Russian fleet hadn't come off unscathed, with more than a few ships damaged or weighed down by holes below the waterline.
Then, as the two formations were trying to come up with what to do next, something happened that caught everybody by surprise.
In the last few minutes, from the Quarantine Fort no more gunfire had been heard, replaced by sounds of battle and rifles being shot.
Out of the blue, from within some cheering was heard, and in a few moments, under the astonished eyes of both lines, the Imperial flag came down and was struck, quickly replaced by the French tricolor.
"The fort!" someone shouted in the general silence and shock. "The Quarantine Fort fell!"